Chaun Fine My Deary Hunney

DESCRIPTION: Chorus: "Chaun fine my dear hunney." On Saturday night I go to town. I look behind the trees and bushes [for a girl?]. I wash my pot, boil it sweet, sweep the house, clean my knife, make my bed soft and....
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1834 (Wentworth; see NOTES)
KEYWORDS: sex food worksong
FOUND IN: West Indies
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Abrahams-DeepTheWaterShallowTheShore, pp. 13-14, "Chaun Fine My Deary Hunney" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [109 words]: I concede that finding sex in this song is speculating on double entendre.
Abrahams says about the chorus that "the reference to 'chaun fine' is probably what the author heard for 'shant' fine,' a phrase still heard from members of the chorus as encouragement to the singing leader."
The Abrahams text is from Trelawney Wentworth, The West India Sketch Book (London: Whittaker & Co, 1834 ("Digitized by Google"), Vol. 2 p 67 (Abrahams has this as Vol. 1). Wentworth writes that this is a song that would be sung by a few workers loading and unloading carts taking sugar cane to the mill, and carrying the cane on their head to the mill [pp. 63-68]. - BS
Last updated in version 4.0
File: AWIS13

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